After Action Report #36

Summary

Savage Lovecast: After Action Report #36

Date: July 3, 2026
Host: Dan Savage
Guest: Jay

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Episode Overview

This episode of “After Action Report,” a Savage Lovecast segment, focuses on personal stories of first-time sexual adventures, particularly from listeners in long-term relationships who are exploring new dimensions of their sexuality. This week, Dan Savage interviews Jay, who recounts his and his husband’s first experience at a bathhouse while vacationing in Vancouver, Canada. The conversation touches on the challenges, fears, and communication breakthroughs that accompanied their journey as a long-term “monogamish” couple delving into group sexual play.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing Jay & Defining Monogamish

• [00:47] Jay describes himself as a resident of a small city on the east coast, a long-time Savage Lovecast listener, and someone who's been with his partner for 15 years (married for 10).
• Their relationship evolved from strict monogamy to being “monogamish”—a term coined by Dan Savage and defined as “monogamous-ish,” allowing for occasional outside experiences.
• Quote:
  • “I've found that that term is a great explanation for our journey into the story, I guess.” (Jay, 00:58)

2. The Decision to Open Up

• [01:36] The couple began as strictly monogamous for about five years, but as they matured, their approach shifted.
• Jay admits he was more eager to explore than his husband, though both eventually grew into the experience.
• Communication, inspired by Dan’s advice, played a significant role in shaping their relationship structure.

3. Why a Bathhouse? And Why Vancouver?

• [02:36] For their first major adventure, the couple chose to visit a bathhouse in Vancouver while on vacation.
• Jay clarifies that being far from home wasn’t about secrecy, but more about embracing the “when in Rome” mindset.

4. Fears and Expectations: Navigating Discomfort

• [05:55] Both Jay and his husband had anxieties:
  • His husband worried about body image and feeling out of place.
  • Jay’s main concern was the pressure to “do something”—the fear of not living up to the bathhouse fantasy.
• Quote:
  • “As you get older, there's very few things that are genuinely new experiences as an adult. And I just felt like it's time to continue to push myself into doing things that are new and that make me uncomfortable.” (Jay, 03:46)
  • “Once I removed that pressure from myself of needing to not have something happen, it became so much more of a let's just go experience this together.” (Jay, 06:08)

5. Dan’s Advice on Navigating Public Sex Environments

• [07:00] Dan underscores that “nothing has to happen”—it’s crucial not to force experiences just to justify entry or expense.
• Quote:
  • “That's the perfect attitude to carry into.” (Dan, 07:54)

6. The Actual Experience: Foggy Glasses, Social Cues, and Group Play

• [08:11] Jay coped with literal and figurative blindness: his glasses fogged up, and he wasn’t familiar with traditional cruising signals.
• This shifted more responsibility to his husband, who eventually initiated their involvement after recognizing other interested couples.
• Memorable Moment: Jay describes losing count at eight participants during their hallway group encounter, plus a “gallery” of watchers.
• Quote:
  • “I lost count after eight… eight men in the hallway. With a group of another 20 probably standing around watching us.” (Jay, 09:45)
  • Jay emphasizes the culture of enthusiastic consent in the bathhouse:
    • “All of the guys watching, no one was trying to touch anyone else without explicit like, hey, come in here and join us… Everyone respected that immediately.” (Jay, 10:01)

7. Debriefing and Relationship Growth

• [11:00] After the experience, Jay and his husband walked through Vancouver in the early hours, brimming with conversation and excitement, debriefing the night and planning for future adventures.
• Dan uses their story to illustrate how new shared experiences keep long-term relationships fresh, regardless of monogamy.
• Quote:
  • “You gotta make new stuff to talk about… Have those adventures and push yourself to do things that make you slightly uncomfortable but in a good way.” (Jay, 13:22, 13:34)

8. Advice for Bathhouse First-Timers

• [13:42] Jay’s recommendations:
  • Over-planners should do their research to minimize surprises.
  • Remember, you can always leave at any time—don’t feel trapped.
  • Acknowledge the fear, but don’t let it deny you meaningful new experiences.
• Quote:
  • “If I don't like this, after five minutes I can leave… As I've gotten older, I have realized to not let fear stop you from doing the things that you want to do.” (Jay, 14:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• “We are monogamish, as you've coined. And I've found that that term is a great explanation for our journey into the story, I guess.” — Jay, 00:58
• “There's very few things that are genuinely new experiences as an adult… I just felt like it's time to continue to push myself into doing things that are new and that make me uncomfortable.” — Jay, 03:46
• “Once I removed that pressure from myself of needing to not have something happen, it became so much more of a let's just go experience this together and we can go back and have sex at the hotel after we're all wound up if nothing else happens.” — Jay, 06:08
• “Nothing has to happen. So you don't put yourself under pressure to do something. That's the perfect attitude…” — Dan, 07:00
• “I lost count after eight… eight men in the hallway. With a group of another 20 probably standing around watching us.” — Jay, 09:45
• “The level of respect and consent among everybody in the bathhouse.” — Jay, 10:01
• “You gotta make new stuff to talk about. That's what's important.” — Jay, 13:22
• “You have to… have those adventures and push yourself to do things that make you slightly uncomfortable but in a good way.” — Jay, 13:34
• “If I don't like this, after five minutes I can leave. And accepting that as a part of the experience was really ultimately what helped me get to the point of pushing myself to go.” — Jay, 14:11

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Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------| | 00:47 | Jay introduces himself and relationship | | 01:36 | Discussing monogamy–monogamish shift | | 02:36 | Motivations for visiting a bathhouse | | 03:46 | Jay discusses discomfort and seeking novelty | | 05:55 | Fears before attending the bathhouse | | 07:00 | Dan’s advice: “Nothing has to happen” | | 08:11 | Navigating the bathhouse/culture/barriers | | 09:45 | Group play and experience of consent | | 11:00 | After-event debrief with spouse | | 13:22 | Relationship lessons and lasting insights | | 13:42 | Jay’s advice for first-timers |

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Takeaways

• Communication and shared adventure are vital for keeping long-term relationships engaging, whether monogamous or open.
• Healthy discomfort can lead to growth and memorable experiences if approached mindfully and consensually.
• Consent and respect were notably strong within the bathhouse scene recounted.
• Practical advice: Do your research, set expectations low for outcomes, and give yourself permission to bail if uncomfortable.

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This episode serves as both a window into one couple’s evolving intimacy and an encouraging, practical guide for others contemplating new sexual frontiers together—delivered with Dan Savage’s trademark warmth and frankness.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. You're listening to After Action Report at Savage Love.

[B]

After Action Report. Welcome to After Action Report, where listeners share fascinating stories of first time sexual experiences. The stories keep pouring in. Stories of fantasies fulfilled, stories of fantasies indulged, and stories of steps outside comfort zones. Sometimes little baby steps. Sometimes. Sometimes great big fucking leaps. This week we meet Jay, who, with his husband by his side, tiptoed into his very first, but not his very last. From the sound of things, Canadian Bathhouse. Jay. Jay, welcome to the show.

[A]

Thanks, Dan. Super happy to be here.

[B]

Thank you for being here. So before we get to the new thing that you tried. Who are you? Who's Jay? Give the listeners a mental image of you that they can hold in their heads while they picture what you're doing.

[A]

Yeah. So I live in a smallish city on the east coast. Been listening and been shaped by you, Mr. Dan Savage, for a large part of my adult life, for better and worse, I guess. I've been with my partner now for 15 years. We've been married for 10. We are monogamish, as you've coined. And I've found that that term is a great explanation for our journey into the story, I guess.

[B]

So how long were you guys. I imagine if you're monogamish now, and it was a journey that you were monogamous at first.

[A]

Yeah, I would say for the first five years or so that we were strictly monogamous. We were relatively young when we got together, so it was something that evolved as we matured and got older with each other.

[B]

So was opening up the relationship or opening it a crack, which is kind of what monogamish sort of means. Was it a mutual idea that you both had at the same time, or did one of you bring it to the other?

[A]

I think it was definitely me pushing it a little bit more. I felt a little bit more comfortable with it. And it began as us doing things together, and from there, it's kind of evolved a little bit, and it's still, you know, it's still changing on a. On a daily basis. And I've just kind of tried to live by a lot of the things that you talk about on your podcast. And it's helped. It's really helped our communication and our relationship grow into something stronger and better.

[B]

That's very gratifying to hear, and thank you so much for saying that. Now, let's talk about what you did. You and your husband, you tried something new. What was it?

[A]

Yeah, we went to a Canadian bathhouse on vacation.

[B]

Which Canadian city?

[A]

Vancouver.

[B]

Okay. And had you always wanted to go to a bathhouse? You say you live in a small city on the east coast. There are certainly sex clubs and bathhouses closer by. Was part of the desire or enticement of it being in Vancouver that you were far from home and less likely to run into somebody from the club?

[A]

No, I don't think that that had anything to do with it. It was more of a just when in Rome or when in Vancouver in this situation.

[B]

So it sounds like you're the more adventurous sensation seeking, new experience seeking, personless relationship, which is a good thing to be, that is Terry, in our relationship, it is a good thing for one of the guys to be maybe a little bit more leaning out or leaning in or something a little bit more adventurous, because then the less adventurous guy gets dragged off on adventures that they wind up enjoying that they might not otherwise go on. So I hope your partner appreciates you.

[A]

Oh, he definitely does. I've definitely pushed him to do things that he wouldn't have otherwise been comfortable doing. But I'm also pushing myself while I'm doing it too.

[B]

So what was it about a bathhouse that you wanted to experience?

[A]

I think that there's, as you get older, there's very few things that are genuinely new experiences as an adult. And I just felt like it's time to continue to push myself into doing things that are new and that make me uncomfortable. And you can't live your life out of fear of doing things. And it's where we are. It's difficult to have sexual adventures. You know, we're on the apps occasionally, but it's. It's tough, right? We're. We're getting a little bit older and the, the younger guys aren't super into us, especially in this area. So it was a great way for us to adventure out and have a new sexual experience that we don't get to have on a regular basis.

[B]

Well, the younger guys where you live need to have their heads examined. We don't record video for after action report, but I can see you right now. We are on a video chat with each other and you are scorching hot. The guys in Vancouver must have been super psyched when they saw you and your husband walk into the bathhouse that night.

[A]

We were definitely not ignored.

[B]

So the first time I went into gay bar, I felt like I was passing through an airlock into the back of the wardrobe in Narnia or something. I was passing through an airlock and my ears popped. What was it like you thought about going to A bathhouse. For a long time, this pushed you outside your comfort zone. Sometimes you talked about how you wanted to try something that you were uncomfortable with or made you uncomfortable. Just like there's different kinds of jealousy. Good jealousy, bad jealousy, toxic jealousy. And the kind of jealousy that makes you see your partner through someone else's eyes and appreciate them in a way you might have not been recently. There is a good kind of discomfort and a bad kind of discomfort. I'm uncomfortable with this idea because it just has no appeal or it alarms or appalls me. And I'm uncomfortable with this idea because it appeals to me. But I have these fears, so it must have been that ladder. There's something about going to a bathhouse that really appealed to you. But there were things about going to a bathhouse that put you off for a very long time from going to a bathhouse. What were the fears? I get what the attraction might have been, but tell us what your fears were.

[A]

It's interesting because we had very completely separate fears. Whereas my husband was very much worried about how he was going to look and how he was going to be perceived by other people. More confidence about my body and how I'm going to feel in that moment. Am I going to be confident walking in thinking that everyone was going to be an Adonis in there? Which obviously was not the case. There was body types of all different sizes. And that fear of his melted away almost immediately as soon as we went in and he realized that everyone looked different and was beautiful and sexy in their own way. But for me, it was. And I had to get over that very quickly of like, what if we don't do anything? And that was kind of the thing that drove me over the edge to actually go was, it's okay if nothing happens. I can just go in here and walk around and experience it and just take in the environment I don't need to put. So once I removed that pressure from myself of needing to not have something happen, it became so much more of a let's just go experience this together and we can go back and have sex at the hotel after we're all wound up if nothing else happens.

[B]

That is absolutely the right attitude to enter a public sex environment or a sex club or a bathhouse with nothing hassle to happen. People will go out to a public sex environment or not go because they're afraid that something might happen that they don't want to have happen because something has to happen. But sometimes people will go. And if they have this mindset that we came all this way, we paid the entry fee, we came through that airlock, we overcame our fears to enter this space, and it's not worth it if we don't get laid. And then people will wind up doing something. Either the thing itself or doing something with someone that they weren't that into that leaves a bad taste in their mouth or about this environment. It's really important the first time you go anywhere, and I think the millionth time you go anywhere to tell yourself nothing has to happen. So you don't put yourself under pressure to do something. That's the perfect attitude to carry into.

[A]

Yeah. And. And it's what. It's what got me in the door. And literally through the airlock, they. They act. It's basically an airlock. Double. Double door to get into it too. So quite literally passing through the airlock.

[B]

Okay, let's get down to the nitty gritties. Sounds like something did happen.

[A]

Yeah. It's really interesting because I wear glasses, and in a bathhouse, glasses are not conducive to a dark, steamy environment. They kept fogging up, so I would take them on and off. And I'm essentially blind without them on. So the cruising culture was. I grew up in the apps. That was just a language I do not speak. And that was very overwhelming in the moment. That was something I didn't plan for or consider.

[B]

And it's all about eye contact and very subtle eye contact. So if you're blind without your glasses and they're steamed up or off, I

[A]

was essentially rendered useless for most of this experience, which really put the pressure on my husband to be literate in and be able to see what the cues were on people. And at one point after, I don't know, I felt like we were a fox in a cage pacing around for 45 minutes, just doing laps. And we eventually went into a dark room and. And I'm basically blind at this point. I see shadows and there's red light, and that's about all I can see. And he grabbed on my towel and he said, let's go. And I was like, I definitely missed something. So we went out into the hallway, and there was this couple that was a little bit older than us, very much my husband's type. Very big guys, just very muscular men. And started in the hallway and then just pulled people in from there, and it ended up being a big group party in the hallway.

[B]

Define group party.

[A]

I lost count after eight.

[B]

I think eight after dinner.

[A]

Mints, eight cocktails, eight men in the hallway. With a group of another 20 probably standing around watching us.

[B]

Wow. Fucking and sucking or just J O in the hallway?

[A]

Just. Yeah, there was no fucking happening. It was more of just a general sucking, touching each other, making out, just really just having fun. And I. I do have to say, in that moment, I realized just how awesome the consent was because all of the guys watching, no one was trying to touch anyone else without explicit like, hey, come in here and join us. You are welcome in this group. And even in that moment, you're still getting touched and like, no, thank you. And everyone respected that immediately. That was one big takeaway for me was the level of respect and consent among everybody in the bathhouse.

[B]

Had to be sad for the guys who felt like they were not getting picked for the team in gym class again. But it's an honor just to get

[A]

to watch they're welcome, I guess. I mean, I didn't think about it in that moment, but yeah, after leaving, it's like, yeah, that not getting picked for gym class does suck.

[B]

So what kind of convo did you and your husband have afterwards? You were already monogamish. You'd already had sex with other people together, and it sounds like you evolved to a point where you were sometimes able to hook up solo with other people. Your first group sex experience with your husband in a bathhouse. I remember having like the most amazing sexual adventures with Terry or with my boyfriend. And we are just like, chatter, we can't take public transit on the way home because we are talking about it and like enthusing about it. Was that so for you guys? Were you just on fire even after you blew your loads and left?

[A]

Yeah, quite literally. There was no way we could have been on public transportation after. It was great. We were walking downtown Vancouver at two in the morning. No one was around. So we were able to just be full on chatterboxes and talk about what we'll do differently next time, how awesome it was, what he was experiencing, what I was experiencing. Because again, we didn't get to talk even after as we were still in the bathhouse. So we really didn't get to do the full debrief until after we left and got to really understand how each other was feeling, which was really cool to see the differences and the similarities and what we were thinking in those moments.

[B]

It's so great to talk with you because your story, you know, together 15 years, married 10, monogamous, then a conversation about opening up and experimenting to this adventure. You guys are a perfect illustration as this advice I give people all the time on the show, which is in a long term relationship, you gotta go on adventures together and that's what keeps the spark alive. That doesn't mean you have to be open. I'm not telling everybody out there in a monogamous relationship that you have to be non monogamous to have an adventure. You can have sex on the roof, you can have sex at work, you can do crazy stuff, you can go to a sex club and just have sex with each other. There's lots of ways to have adventures in a long term monogamous relationship without opening up. But you guys are a great example of the couple been together for a long time and you are linking arms and getting out there and having adventures together and you leaving the bathhouse and talking and talking and talking about what worked, what didn't work, what was exciting, what you want to do differently next time. After 15 years together, sometimes couples run out of shit to say to each other. But open couples, if it's a successful open relationship and closed couples who are adventurous, you have new stuff to talk about all the time.

[A]

You got to make new stuff to talk about. That's what's important. You can't just do the same things over and over again. And you have to, like you said, have those adventures and push yourself to do things that make you slightly uncomfortable but in a good way.

[B]

Outside your comfort zone but not in a panicked place is the gray area we're talking about.

[A]

I was a little panicked for sure.

[B]

Okay, any advice for people out there who've always wanted to go to a bathhouse and never let themselves go to a bathhouse? For the record, I went to bathhouses in my late 20s and 30s doing outreach for HIV prevention education. So I had entered a bathhouse, but I didn't go to a sex club as a participant until I was in my 40s. So any advice for other people who've hit middle age and are curious and haven't let themselves go, besides go and do it. Push yourself outside your comfort zone, if you're interested. But any specific advice? Now having been.

[A]

Yeah, if you are anything like me and an over planner and an over thinker, do your research. Because I did my research, I wanted to be very well prepared and understand exactly what I was walking into, what it was going to be like, where I could go, where I wanted to go, where I didn't want to go. But I think just allowing yourself to be okay with, if I don't like this, after five minutes I can leave. And accepting that as a part of the experience was really ultimately what helped me get to the point of pushing myself to go. Because you're not stuck in that situation. If you don't like it, you can simply walk out and leave. And as I've gotten older, I have realized to not let fear stop you from doing the things that you want to do. And yes, I was scared. I was fearful of going in and having this new experience. But if I let that win, there's no way I would have gotten to have this awesome experience with my husband. And I'm so grateful that I overcame that and did it.

[B]

Jay, thank you so much for coming on the app Reaction Report. It was a real pleasure chatting with you.

[A]

Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you. Jay. I'm so glad to hear that you and your husband are keeping things sizzling hot, having adventures together. Even adventures where you can't see a damn thing. I hope my other married listeners take note. If you have a story you want to brag about or a tale of a sexual adventure gone sideways, write about it. Send us the details at Qavage Love and you might be my next guest here on After Action Report. After Action Report this episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Load Boost by VB Health. Load Boost is a supplement designed to improve the taste, the volume and the overall health of your semen. If you're already putting in the work, why not make your performance unforgettable? Made in the USA NSF. Certified and produced in an FDA registered facility. Thousands of guys across 50 states and 45 countries swear by LoadBoost. If you want bigger finishes and better reviews from your audiences. If you want better taste, better mouthfeel, go to loadboost.com today and use code savage for 10% off. Or click the link in this week's episode description. That's loadboost.com and use offer Code Savage.